The Fat Lady Sings

Gary Gygax Dead at 69

An old friend of mine has passed away. I met Gary Gygax in the mid 70’s at an SCA event. Needless to say, D&D was very popular amongst Anachronists.  I was introduced to the game while watching Gary play with some friends of mine. Introductions were made.  I thought he was very nice.  I didn’t know him well – just enough to say hi to whenever we ran into one another. I had no idea he was that much older than me. But then all the men wore their hair long and had beards - and all the woman looked like 60's refugees - flowing hair, billowly skirts.  Who knew how old any of us were?

You know - I have all my original D&D books, figures and dungeon maps.  My most popular character was borrowed from a good friend – the great and powerful wizard Usnavy (yes, my friend was in the Navy).  Shout out to you, Riknard.  Do you remember Gary?  He was at that tourney where women competed for the first time – and later at the Ren Faire outside of San Francisco.  You could usually find him at Poul Anderson's pavillion. 

Ah well.  Time passes so quickly.  I just cannot believe he is dead.  Rest in peace, my friend.  You are remembered.

The Way We Were

Michael Gartner has been editor of newspapers large and small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing.

"My father never drove a car."


Well, that's not quite right.

I should say I never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.

"In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive through life and miss it."

At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh, bull----!" she said. "He hit a horse."

"Well," my father said, "there was that, too."

In Memoriam

Two deaths.  Two very different artists. They share one thing in common, however - no special programs to commemorate their lives, no long lists of their accomplishments set to music – I guess that’s another thing they both shared - music. Well – the founding of Pink Floyd was mentioned more often today than anything June Allyson ever did – but then Syd Barrett was more contemporary royalty. It seems Ms. Allyson has drifted off into the night on a very silent breeze. Personally – I think it’s a sin both passed with so little fanfare. Where the hell was Larry King on this one?  I mean - the man worships death anyway – so why not trot out those few living brilliant contemporaries of June Allison to remember her in a fitting fashion?  I was a huge fan of hers.  And Pink Floyd’s conception of The Wall is and shall always be riveting.  I can still see the Syd/Geldof avatar rearranging the ruin that was his mind in very tiny pieces on the floor. Everything was there - it's the order that was royally fucked up.  Well here’s to the both of you – America’s sweetheart, and a sensitive soul who just couldn’t cope with life’s day to day. Rest in peace.

War and Rememberance

I grew up in a time of war.  It was the Vietnam War, and the effects of its violence were inescapable.  Through the prism of my small black and white TV, I watched young men disintegrate, Buddhist monks turn into charcoal, children run down dirt roads while their skin dripped off in burning skeins behind them.  As I grew up in the Bay area, I passed by protestors of every stripe - both for and against; a jumble of passion, bombast and rhetoric - all steeped in the sweet scent of marijuana.